The Fall- Revisited

Taking a brief detour from the planned entry, I want to address something discussed in sunday school. Disclaimer: long entry.
During sunday school this week we talked about Gen 3. The main point that the teacher was making was that God wants the best for us and satan wants us to think that God is withholding something good from us. Which I completely agree. My post about the Fall can be found here.

There was a question raised in the class which I tried to answer but was very unclear in my attempt as vinci would point out =P. so to make ammends I am posting hopefully a more clear response to the question (just for you vinci).

The question was: In Gen 2:17 it says, "but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die", however Adam and Eve did not die "on that day" in fact Adam died in Gen 5:5 having lived 930 years. Did God make a mistake or lied? Isn't the serpent more truthful then in saying "you surely would not die" in Gen 3:4?

I am gonna give three answers here. One is what people usually give "spiritual death", one is what I found on the internet, and lastly one that I tried to give in class. Here the problem is in Gen 2:17. "on that day... you will surely die."

First attempt is to say that the "die" in this warning given by God is refering to spiritual death. which I believe is true but not complete. Looking at the Hebrew, it seems to suggest an emphatic physical death. Here is what Garry Brantley, a Bible scholar says:
The usage of the phrase “you shall surely die” (mot tamut) indicates that a violent, physical death is under consideration. This grammatical construction juxtaposes an infinitive absolute (mot), and the imperfect verb (tamut), which provides the emphatic nuance you will “surely, or indeed” die (Lambdin, 1971, p. 158). While it is true that the word “die” can refer to natural causes or to violent death (Smick, 1980, 1:496), the manner in which the verb is used in this phrase indicates the latter. In fact, this grammatical construction appears several times in the Hebrew Bible, and commonly denotes a physical, violent death (1995, 15:23).

This lead us to the second response, "on that day" is not really on that day. That is to say that the phrase "on that day" is speaking more about certainty of death rather than the immediacy of death. There seems to be examples of this in OT where the phrase "on that day" is speaking more of a certainty of outcome than speaking about the chronology of outcome (cf. 1 Kings 2:37) More from here. Also, there is some leniency in the Hebrew about the phrase "on that day", other occurance of this Hebrew word in the OT sometimes is interpreted as "when" or not a literal day. This is addressed on this website.

Now to my answer. Disclaimer: I am not sure I am right, but I want to show my line of reason. One of the teacher threw out the challenge for us to make sense of it without other books of the Bible and without knowledge of Hebrew. This is basically saying if you only had the book of Genesis can you reconcile the problem you see in Gen 2 and Gen 3. Furthermore, from what I believe about the clarity of Scripture, which I think means that Scripture was written so that everyone can understand, not just scholars or clergy, I believe that we can make sense of Gen 2 and Gen 3.

Here is my line of thought. This is a "difficult" text. We don't use difficult text to establish theology but use clear text to establish what we know about God and to use that to make clear the difficult texts. The difficulty in Genesis 2:17 was already pointed out. Did Adam DIE on THAT DAY which he took the fruit? The underlying accusation is that God made an empty threat, or was wrong in His warning. We know that God does not lie nor can He lie. We also know that what He proclaim will come to pass. So I will approach this text knowing that No. God did not make a mistake in Gen 2:17.

How then can I back up my assertions? Context. First, let's deal with death. Is this narrative about death or is the focus on taking the fruit and rebellion? Just by doing a quick word search you can see that tree and fruit was mentioned much more than death and references of death. The issue here is rebellion. Moreover, death, that is physical death, is not the issue. If we are hung up on physical death then we miss the point. If death was really THE problem, then the answer would have been found in the tree of life Gen 3:22 and the warning of God in Gen 2:17 would be void.

The problem, then, is not what is said in Gen 2:17 but our understanding of death. One of the people in the class asked if Adam and Eve knew what death was? How can the warning have any weight if Adam didn't even know what death was? They have not seen death or anything close to death how then can they know? I will venture an answer here. We should not view death here as a thing on its own but as an absence of a thing, namely life or being. Death is the absence of life. Surely, Adam knew what that means, Eve was not there, and then Eve was there. Eve was not being, and then Eve was a being. As Gen 3:19 puts it "For you are dust, And to dust you shall return" Adam knew what it means to die, it is the absence of life, the end of being, returning to dust. Now, if we take that idea of opposites, we can see death in a different light. If life to Adam was life in the Garden: dominion over every creature, perfect communion with God and access to every good thing, then death in a lesser extent is the absence of these things, the end of life in the Garden. These things you can see play out at the end of Gen 3.

How about the phrase "on that day"? I believe it is both speaking of the immediacy and the certainty of death. Immediacy in the lesser sense of death and certainty in the full sense of death, the end of physical life. Why do I say that? We should examine the happenings on the day of the Fall. God curses those who are held accountable and the expell them from the Garden. We must understand Gen 2:17 in light of Gen 3. It can be deduced that, "You will surely die" encompasses the corruption of man and of nature and the separation between man and God and it indeed happen on that day. The effect of the rebellion is immediate. Adam was removed from life as he knew it. The death mentioned also encompasses physical death (cf. Gen 3:19, 5:5). In dealing with physical death the phrase "on that day" emphasizes the certainty of death in full.

With that said, physical death is not the focus of the passage. The themes of rebellion, corruption and separation are the focal point. This separation some might call spiritual death. Here are some closing thoughts: God wanted Adam to die after the Fall. Someone in the class said that Gen 2:17 really talks about death physically. Granted that is true, I agree. But that is not the main issue! God's warning is not just that you will cease to exist, but that Adam will exist separated from Him, the source of Life. Adam in the Garden was in the presence of Life; then surely separation from God is separation from Life, that is absence of Life and that is death.

We humans are concerned about physical death and rightly so, who wants to die really? We are given a will to live, you can see it in a dying patient, gasping for air in the last moments of his life. But God is not so much concern about it. Like I said God wanted Adam to die after the Fall. Adam MUST die or else God's word would have be void. The solution is not in the tree of life. Then solution is in Gen 3:15, the Seed of the woman, Jesus Christ. Note that Jesus defeated death, yet we still die physically, even though we are Christians. Once again God is not concern about our physical death but more so about our standing before Him. Are we in the presence of Life or are we in the absence? When we read Gen 2 and 3, I hope we don't just come out saying because of sin therefore we die, which is true, but rather be convinced of our separation from God, and our need for Jesus. Lastly, with this understanding of life and death, we should not fear death, because in death, we truly know life, that is we are brought into the presence of God, the true essence of Life.